ICE arrested 14 people at a Norristown-area food market. The Mexican consulate says it’s monitoring the situation.
“Norristown is under attack,” said an immigration activist group, saying that about 25 vehicles carrying ICE agents had rolled into the Montgomery County seat.
More than a dozen ICE agents swarmed the Super Gigante food market near Norristown early Wednesday, taking 14 people into custody as part of a surge of agency activity and arrests across Montgomery County.
Unides Para Servir Norristown, an activist group, said that in the days before the action at the market it had confirmed four detentions in Norristown and had reports of ICE sightings in Ambler, Willow Grove, and Cheltenham Township. Several people were taken into custody Sunday at the Hatfield Village Apartments in Hatfield, near Lansdale, the group said.
“Norristown is under attack,” Unides posted on its Facebook page Wednesday, saying that about 25 vehicles had rolled into the Montgomery County seat.
The Mexican Consulate in Philadelphia said it was monitoring the situation.
Hours after agents arrived at the food market, the Juntos immigration advocacy group in Philadelphia shared video of what it said was a man being arrested outside the city Criminal Justice Center. Courthouses have increasingly become sites where ICE arrests occur.
At 8 a.m. Wednesday, ICE agents — some in military garb, some in civilian clothes — arrived at the Gigante market with a warrant to search the business, according to a manager there.
Officers swept the store, taking a number of employees into custody for alleged immigration violations, said the manager, who asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal.
“We’re like, ‘What now?’” the manager said. “We’re definitely saddened and honestly a little speechless. They weren’t just employees, they were family and friends.”
At lunchtime the store was trying to determine exactly who had been arrested. The business was shut down for more than an hour.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Philadelphia said Wednesday that agents accompanied by others from Homeland Security Investigations and the IRS conducted a federal court-authorized search at the market. Fourteen people who did not have legal status to be in the United States were arrested, ICE said.
Those 14 were taken into ICE custody pending deportation proceedings. None were identified by the agency, and it was not known where in the detention system they were being held.
“This is an ongoing investigation, and no further information will be released at this time,” an ICE spokesperson said.
The market has a Norristown mailing address but is physically located in West Norriton.
Video posted by the group Project Libertad shows federal agents outside the market in masks, helmets, and military gear, carrying rifles. They are confronted by civilians who call them “Nazis” and “Gestapo” and ask if they tell their children what they do for a living.
The shopping plaza that contains the market has been visited by ICE agents at least three times this year, according to one employee. The first time, agents were following a car, and in the second, agents made an arrest in front of the market, the employee said.
An employee at the self-service laundry next to the supermarket said foot traffic at the washing business has dropped significantly since the start of the year.
Claire Kaplan, 38, said Wednesday that she drove 45 minutes to the market from Willow Grove after hearing that arrests were taking place, seeking to support the workers. She is not affiliated with an activist organization, she said, but was simply moved to try to help immigrants.
She earlier started an “ICE watch” tip line, and was giving out the phone number to people entering the store on Wednesday.
One woman who was going into the store panicked when she misheard, thinking that Kaplan meant ICE was currently inside. Once she understood, she proceeded to tackle her grocery list.
The surge comes not long after President Donald Trump named Montgomery County to a list of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that he has targeted for their refusal to help enforce federal immigration laws. Trump has pledged to withhold federal money from those places, hundreds of which were named from coast to coast.
Efforts to contact the market owner were unsuccessful Wednesday.
Tensions around the ICE arrests erupted at Wednesday’s regularly scheduled Montgomery County Board of Commissioners meeting, where a handful of immigration advocates called on the board to respond.
Democratic Commissioners Neil Makhija and Jamila Winder, who control the three-person board, encouraged those concerned to contact local and federal officials. They called for ICE agents to be held accountable, while Republican Commissioner Tom DiBello called for respect for law enforcement.
DiBello criticized the introduction of politics into the meetings, while Winder accused the Republican of lacking empathy.
“People are being terrorized by masked ICE agents in Montgomery County, that’s what we’re saying. And if you can’t be empathetic to that, that’s disconcerting,” Winder, who is from the Norristown area, said to DiBello. “I’m looking at these pictures on Facebook right where I’m raising my son, people with guns. We should be concerned about that as a board.”
DiBello said he had empathy for law enforcement officers under attack and shot back: “No matter what, we should be respecting our law enforcement agencies until they break the law.”
Minutes later, Makhija said “we’ve never seen this level of vilification of immigrants,” and DiBello interrupted to say the vilification was of “illegals.”
The Trump administration has set aggressive goals for enforcement, demanding that ICE and its partner agencies arrest at least 3,000 people a day. That’s more than a million a year.
Trump has pledged to deport millions in what he says will be the largest removal operation in U.S. history. He recently achieved a huge increase in budgeting for ICE, from about $8 billion to roughly $28 billion. That makes it the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
Some polls show softening public support for Trump’s immigration policies. In June, a national Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters showed 54% disapproved of the president’s handling of immigration issues, with 43% approving. And 56% disapproved of his handling of deportations, with 40% approving.
The Mexican Consulate in Philadelphia said Wednesday that it was monitoring the situation in Montgomery County.
Head Consul Carlos Obrador said at least six Mexican nationals had been detained.
“It is important to point out that regardless of their immigration status, people have basic rights,” he said, and that includes the right to request to speak to their consulate.
The Mexican Consulate is ready to provide its nationals with legal assistance, and people who think their relatives may have been detained can reach out, he said.
Fourteen arrests constitute the largest single known enforcement action in the Philadelphia region since Trump took office. Seven people were arrested at a North Philadelphia car wash a week into the president’s term, and five were arrested in South Philadelphia on July 6. Outside the Philadelphia area, ICE arrested 17 undocumented workers at a Bethlehem building-restoration project in June.
Unides Norristown said ICE was seeking to intimidate families in the community, where one out of three residents is Latino. It demanded an immediate stop “to these destructive practices that break homes, generate terror, and violate human dignity. Our community deserves respect, not persecution.”
Norristown has been a target for ICE, with more than 20 people arrested there at the end of May and beginning of June.
At the Hatfield Village Apartments on Wednesday, the staff at the management office referred questions to supervisors, who did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Staff writers Michelle Myers and Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.